Audi 2024 MLS Cup Playoff Conference Semifinals

The times and dates for the Conference Semifinals are official. Take a look at the schedule here.

North Texas SC win 2024 MLS NEXT Pro Cup

North Texas SC captured the 2024 MLS NEXT Pro Cup on Saturday evening, defeating Philadelphia Union II, 3-2 at Toyota Stadium. The Western Conference champions completed a heroic three-goal second-half comeback to claim their first MLS NEXT Pro title after trailing 2-0 at halftime.

Ok, fine, maybe you should be a little surprised, but we’ve got to pat ourselves on the back here. If you’ve been reading The Daily Kickoff, you knew this was absolutely on the table even before the series started. Atlanta United have been the one team that’s consistently gotten the better of Inter Miami this year. The only time they didn’t, Atlanta found itself playing its third road game in six days.

And, of course, there’s the overperformance. You know, the thing that’s been driving me insane all year to the point where I felt like I might explode if anyone who mentioned Inter Miami didn’t follow every sentence with “BUT ALSO THEY’VE OUTPERFORMED THEIR UNDERLYING NUMBERS BY A HISTORIC RATE AND IT’S NOT JUST MESSI AND SUÁREZ.”

Oddly enough, Inter Miami actually underperformed their xG by a significant amount, while Atlanta, the least lucky finishing team in MLS this year, overperformed. Dread it. Run from it. Reversion to the mean arrives all the same.

Anyway, yeah, it’s a big win for spreadsheets and all that. It’s an even bigger win for Atlanta United though. They’ve fully reformed their mentality and approach over the last few weeks and it’s been truly remarkable to watch. So often this year they crumbled in adverse situations or were just downright unlucky. Something switched after their regular season loss to CF Montréal that seemed to seal their fate as a non-playoff team. They’ve been near-perfect ever since… or at least resilient enough to make up for their flaws.

There is a level of effort on the margins — winning duels, challenging for balls in the box, making the extra sprint — that we didn’t see from this group during the regular season. It’s only increased as their confidence has increased over the past few weeks.

Atlanta put that on display last night. After going down 1-0 early, they immediately responded with two goals. From there, they put in a professional performance to see out the win. Inter Miami eventually equalized thanks to a Lionel Messi header of all things, but Atlanta found Bartek Slisz open for a header of his own in the box minutes later after a bizarre sequence that started with a Miami player lying down in the box with an apparent injury during a scoring opportunity for Atlanta. The Five Stripes rightfully played on.

And then they held on for what is, on paper, the biggest upset in MLS history. You and I know of course Inter Miami had a ton of flaws, but they still finished with 34 points more than Atlanta United this season. Atlanta snuck into the playoffs. Inter Miami set a points record. Regardless of what the numbers were hinting at, we are on the wildest timeline.

For Miami, there’s no other way to see this but as a tremendous failure. Not just this series, but the season. The Shield is great. However, they came up short in the Concacaf Champions Cup. They came up short in Leagues Cup. And now they’ve come up short in the playoffs. The bottom line is when they went up against great teams (and Atlanta United), they didn’t get the job done. They’ll be remembered for the points record. In my view, they needed another trophy to make this season a success. That’s an impossibly high bar of course. But Miami were supposed to be the ones to clear it.

Now, it’s Atlanta moving on to the next round. And while they won’t be favored again — road teams are gonna road team more often than not still — are you really going to count them out? I mean, they did beat their next opponent on the road just a few weeks ago. Which hey, speaking of…

Orlando survived. There’s no other way to put it. With one of the very last kicks of the game, Charlotte pulled Duncan McGuire down in the box and gift-wrapped a penalty to the Lions that ended up with an equalizer. From there, Orlando took total control in the shootout.

Charlotte will be livid here. They finally scored after 261 minutes of play in this series (not counting stoppage time) and were seconds away from seeing this through. Instead, one mistake ended their season.

Orlando won’t care how they got through, just that they got through. They will care a whole lot though that the rest of the higher seeds in the East crumbled around them in Round One. They now have a clear path to MLS Cup because they’ll host every game until they get there. They’re also the best team of the remaining bunch based on form. They were already one of the hottest teams in the league heading into the playoffs. Now, their toughest competition all wilted under pressure while the Lions caught the breaks the others couldn’t.

We’ll see if they can take advantage of it. They have to win a rivalry game to make it to the Conference Finals. It’s just not the rivalry game they expected. That’s technically great news for them. Just remember though, Atlanta are as hot as anyone right now. And the Five Stripes won in Orlando on Decision Day just a few weeks ago. The Lions should only celebrate avoiding Miami for a little before they start worrying about Atlanta.

Nothing happened for a long time in this one. It felt like we weren’t going to get anything out of it until Cincy and NYCFC collectively agreed to deliver the worst penalty shootout of all time in spectacular fashion. To be fair, the first six takers all converted. Then Cincy missed only for NYCFC to miss what would have been the winner. We got two more makes after that. It would take six more attempts before someone finally converted.

With NYCFC’s fourth shot at a game-sealing conversion, Mitja Ilenič finally sent the ball into the back of the net and sent NYCFC to the conference semifinals.

They weren’t perfect on the day, but they were good enough. That’s all that matters. And now they get to host…maybe the most important Hudson River Derby ever just a few weeks after pummeling the Red Bulls 5-1. With Miami, Columbus and now Cincy gone, everything is on the table for this talented (if still pretty flawed and inconsistent) group.

For Cincy, it’s hard not to be disappointed in a season that got derailed by things that were largely out of their control. The injuries to their center backs and the strange departure of Aaron Boupendza weakened them too much defensively and forced them into a bad spot at striker. They were never meant to have Luca Orellano and Yuya Kubo starting up top in playoff games.

They’ll be back next year though. Probably. Unless, ya know, Lucho Acosta isn’t messing around with his post-match comments about potentially leaving the team.

Good luck out there. Make the right people mad.